Investors want in on the OZ gold rush, including those from traditional retail channels. “The private equity world has not usually seen investors from the retail world such as broker-dealer clients and IRAs,” said SVP of Fund Administration Michael Richards. “The Opportunity Zone legislature has enabled these investors to subscribe to these funds and NES has proven that it is able to use technology and industry expertise to assist these clients and help solve some of the issues they face.”

According to Christopher Hanewald’s OZ article in the Memphis Business Journal, “due to the close proximity to the exact type of limited partner investors with significant amounts of capital gains seeking deferral, private equity groups appear to be best positioned to capitalize on organizing and executing a Qualified Opportunity Fund.”

Hanewald also shared that “Ultimately, while access to more capital does not directly resolve the swelling multiple problems for private equity, access to cheaper capital might. With over 8,700 different QOZs designated across the country, it might take a bit of time to pare down that amount of data; however, the potential tax-advantaged benefit may be well worth the effort.”

The PE market is clearly evolving — and is demanding solutions that keep pace within the Opportunity Zone space. Not only are managers looking to protect their margins and cut costs through automation and scale, there’s also a growing desire to “turn data into dollars” through advanced analytics that could allow them to generate actionable business insight into areas such as risk management and investment performance.

NES has also made updates to our technology to address calculation of share classes and the share prices and have reported these balances to custodians, demonstrating that we have the flexibility to provide this information to our clients who use custodians such as Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley etc.

Finally, as the administrator of over 290 funds of all sizes, we also administer over $20B annually for our private equity, commercial real estate, and Fortune 1000 clientele. We wouldn’t be able to successfully operate without our team of financial professionals who average over 20 years of experience, along with our client services ambassadors who get to know your fund’s needs and processes intimately to help answer any questions our clients may have.